A NERVOUS young woman, on her first shift in the hot seat plotting the progress of German aircraft over the North-East, pinpointed the lone raider closing in on the coast.

"Gotcha" she whispered under her breath - as she pinpointed the Nazi plane and followed its progress on a grid-referenced map.

She thought it strange that no fighters were scrambled to intercept the solo Messerschmitt ME-110E on its course to Scotland - but, as a 19-year-old novice, she just continued with her job.

It was only afterwards that Madge Sanderson learned that she was the spotter who had tracked the final ill-fated mission of Rudolf Hess and played a key part in what was to become one of the greatest mysteries of the Second World War.

Now 79, Madge was reunited yesterday with the map she helped create that day - and is now at the centre of an international investigation into what was behind the Nazi-schemer's flight to Scotland.

Resting in County Hall's cavernous vaults for years until "rediscovered" by the authors of a revisionist book into the Hess affair, the map brought back vivid memories for a woman who last saw it 60 years ago.

An eager raid orderly in Durham's Royal Observer Corps on May 10, 1941, it was the first, and last time, she had ever plotted an enemy plane on the sea board - the grid referenced map.

Madge, of Newton Hall, Durham, said: "For the first time that morning I was asked to go on the Sea Board because the usual person wasn't around. I was actually quite excited because I got to sit in the 'posh seat'.

"Shortly afterwards a small plane was seen by our spotters on the coast who radioed in. I then had to plot it on the map using a magnet.

"It was first spotted about ten miles south of Bamburgh and as I plotted it I realised it was going all the way up to Scotland. As I watched it go up the coast I thought to myself 'Gotcha'.

"Afterwards someone came up to me and asked if I knew who that was. They said it was Rudolph Hess, and I said, 'Oh, really?' I'd never heard of him, of course.

"I heard he eventually jumped out and let the plane make a right mess of Scotland."

Madge, who went on to work for Durham CID for more than 30 years, said she was surprised at the time that no RAF planes were scrambled to intercept Hess's ME-110E fighter bomber.

A new book, Double Standards: The Rudolph Hess Cover-Up, by authors Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior, use several pieces of new evidence, including the map, to back up their theory that Hess was hoping to broker a peace deal with senior Royals and that it was a double agent, and not Hess, who died in Berlin's Spandau prison in 1987.

An ITV programme, by Richard Taylor, will feature the new evidence next month.